Trigger warning: medical gaslighting, reproductive pain, procedural trauma
⭐PART 3 — The First Time I Tried to Get Help (And How Everything Got Even Worse)
When I finally told a doctor anything about my bleeding, I was twenty-eight — and honestly, I only did it because I was terrified something inside me was going very, very wrong. I’d spent almost two decades silently bleeding every day and pretending it was normal. My body was screaming, and I had run out of ways to ignore it.
The first gynecologist I saw actually believed me. That alone felt like a miracle.
She diagnosed me with PCOS (which was true), and prescribed birth control. And for the first time in my entire life, my period stopped.
For almost a month, I tasted something I’d never had before: relief.
Hope.
A glimpse of what life might be like if I wasn’t constantly bleeding or bracing against pain.
But then came sugar-pill week… and everything exploded.
The bleeding barreled back like a horror movie scene — heavier, angrier, unstoppable. And once it came back, it refused to stop. Even when I restarted the birth control. Even when I prayed and begged and tried to hold myself together.
That doctor believed me… but she was nearly impossible to get into. So I went to another clinic, hoping for help.
And that’s where everything started to go terribly wrong.
The IUD That Changed Everything
The next gynecologist cared, but she didn’t quite listen. She was dismissive but she did offer what she called a “solution”: an IUD.
She said it would “calm my uterus.”She said it would “help the bleeding.”She said the pain I felt during insertion was “normal.”
But the moment that device went in, I knew — deep in my bones — something was wrong.
Leaving the clinic, I couldn’t walk more than a few steps at a time. It felt like a chainsaw was tearing me apart from the inside. Every few feet I had to stop, grip something, breathe through the agony. I couldn’t stand up straight. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t move without feeling like my uterus was shredding itself from the inside.
And when I went back to her later (a month later), doubled over in pain, barely able to walk, she brushed me off with the same dismissive tone:
“Spotting is good. That means it’s helping.”
It wasn’t helping. It was destroying me.
I endured that nightmare for 3–4 months before finally going to my primary doctor and begged her to take it out. She listened — gently — and removed it.
I screamed. Not metaphorically. I screamed from the pain of removal while she stopped to soothe me through it.
And the moment it was out? I felt immediate relief.
But still not normal. Not even close.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, that IUD had perforated my uterus. And that damage would haunt me for years.
The Doctor Who Blamed Everything on My Weight
After the IUD ordeal, I ended up in yet another gynecologist’s office, desperate for someone — anyone — to take me seriously.
Instead, she told me everything I’d gone through was because of my weight.
Not the constant bleeding. Not the years of pain. Not the fact that I couldn’t walk upright for months, with that IUD inside me. I still had issues walking for years afterwards.
Just my weight.
And then she said something I’ll never forget:
“If I give you this shot and your period stops, then I’ll believe you.”
As if my suffering needed to be proven to her.
The shot she gave me was known to cause bone loss and tooth deterioration — but I didn’t know that then. I was desperate, scared, and conditioned to believe doctors always know best.
So I agreed.
And everything spiraled.
The bleeding became catastrophic. I made multiple ER trips because I was so pale my mom followed me around the house afraid I would collapse. I was losing blood so rapidly that I nearly needed a transfusion. The pain was unbearable.
And the shot? It damaged my teeth. I’ve lost multiple teeth because of this shot.
Permanent injury — because a doctor wanted to “test” whether my suffering was real.
The ER doctors saw me. They helped me. They were the first to look genuinely worried.
But this gynecologist? She dismissed every single symptom and blamed my weight the entire time.
This was the beginning of the medical gaslighting that would consume the next few years of my life — and it nearly destroyed me long before adenomyosis ever did.
And unbelievably…
The worst was still ahead.